Johann Füller

Community based innovation: How to integrate members of virtual communities into new product development

Online consumer groups represent a large pool of product know-how. Hence, they seem to be a promising source of innovation. At present, except for open source software, little is known about how to utilize this know-how for new product development. In this article we explore if and how members of virtual communities can be integrated into new product development. We explain how to identify and access online communities and how to interact with its members in order to get valuable input for new product development. This approach we term “Community Based Innovation.” The Audi case illustrates the applicability of the method and underscores the innovative capability of consumers encountered in virtual communities.

Communitition: The Tension between Competition and Collaboration in Community-Based Design Contests

Following the concepts of crowdsourcing, co-creation or open innovation, companies are increasingly using contests to foster the generation of creative solutions. Currently, online idea and design contests are enjoying a resurgence through the usage of new information and communication technologies. These virtual platforms allow users both to competitively disclose their creative ideas to corporations and also to interact and collaborate with like-minded peers, communicating, discussing and sharing their insights and experiences, building social networks and establishing a sense of community. Little research has considered that contest communities both promote and benefit from simultaneous co-operation and competition and that both types of relationships need to be emphasized at the same time. In this article, it is argued that the firm-level concept of co-opetition might also be relevant for an innovations success on the individual level within contest communities. Our concept of communitition should include the elements of competitive participation without disabling the climate for co-operation, as numerous user discussions and comments improve the quality of submitted ideas and allow the future potential of an idea to shine through the so-called wisdom of the crowd.

The impact of satisfaction and image on loyalty: the case of Alpine ski resorts

Purpose – Customer satisfaction is seen to be one of the main determinants of loyalty. However, the relationship between customer satisfaction and loyalty does not seem to be linear, many researchers have reported doubts about the predictability of loyalty solely due to customer satisfaction ratings which ignore image as predictor of loyalty. This paper aims to address the issues.Design/methodology/approach – The authors report a study of ski resorts where they first established a causal model of customer satisfaction and image predicting customer loyalty, and then map the scores in a four‐fields‐grid. Additionally the authors conducted a moderator analysis to assess the relative importance of image and satisfaction for loyalty intentions between two different groups (first‐time‐visitors, and regular guests).Findings – The results show that those ski resorts with the highest satisfaction ratings and the highest image ratings have the highest loyalty scores. Among first‐time‐visitors overall satisfaction i...

Community based innovation: a method to utilize the innovative potential of online communities

In this article, the authors suggest a method to utilize the existing innovative potential of online communities by integrating its members virtually into new product development. The introduced concept of community based innovation (CBI) which is founded on groundwork of social exchange and interaction theory was explored, tested and refined in several already conducted business projects in the consumer goods sector. As result of this action research the authors illustrate CBI as a practitioners guideline consisting of four systemized steps along one case study in the automotive industry. The presented study helps to get a deeper understanding and a more detailed overview concerning the procedures and activities used in practice.

Customer Satisfaction with Alpine Ski Areas: The Moderating Effects of Personal, Situational, and Product Factors

In highly competitive markets, customer satisfaction is a key driver of performance, making its measurement and management crucial. Most studies on customer satisfaction take an aggregate standpoint and do not consider segment-specific differences in attribute importance. In this article, the authors report on customer satisfaction with alpine ski resorts. They hypothesize that personal, situational, and product factors moderate the relationship between attribute performance and overall satisfaction. The results show that these factors indeed influence the attribute—performance—satisfaction relationship. Theoretical and managerial implications of these findings are discussed.

Personality, person–brand fit, and brand community: An investigation of individuals, brands, and brand communities

Abstract Brand communities have received considerable and warranted attention from marketing researchers and practitioners. Brand communities can be important sources of information for both the firm and other customers, and they play an important role in building and maintaining strong brands. Nevertheless, the antecedents of brand community identification, such as individual differences across consumers in the propensity to connect with brand communities, are not as well understood. We hypothesise that the enduring personality traits extraversion and agreeableness predict identification with the [brand] community, which in turn, and along with product attachment, will be related to brand trust and brand loyalty. Product attachment itself is hypothesised to be a function of person–brand congruity, the perceived fit between the person and the brand. Those relationships are tested and supported in data from a sample of 662 car enthusiasts attending a large brand community meeting or ‘brandfest’.

Measuring Consumer Preferences Using Conjoint Poker

textabstractWe develop and test an incentive-compatible Conjoint Poker (CP) game. The preference data collected in the context of this game are comparable to incentive-compatible choice-based conjoint (CBC) analysis data. We develop a statistical efficiency measure and an algorithm to construct efficient CP designs. We compare incentive-compatible CP to incentive-compatible CBC in a series of three experiments (one online study and two eye-tracking studies). Our results suggest that CP induces respondents to consider more of the profile-related information presented to them compared with CBC.

Switching experience, customer satisfaction, and switching costs in the ICT industry

Purpose – Stabilizing business in highly competitive and volatile business-to-business (B2B) markets is a strategic imperative for many companies. In such a context, customer retention through the creation of switching barriers (i.e. by increasing switching costs) is a common strategy. The purpose of this paper is to develop a network of relationships among customer switching experience, customer satisfaction, perceived switching costs, and behavioral loyalty intentions. Design/methodology/approach – Survey data were collected from 327 business customers (very small enterprises with fewer than nine employees; customers included physicians, lawyers, tax advisors, consultants, civil engineers, etc.) of an information and communications technology (ICT) company. The research model was tested using partial least square structural equation modeling. Findings – The results show that switching experience negatively influences customer satisfaction and behavioral loyalty intention. Furthermore, the influence of c...

Rate or Trade? Identifying Winning Ideas in Open Idea Sourcing

Information technology (IT) has created new patterns of digitally-mediated collaboration that allow open sourcing of ideas for new products and services. These novel sociotechnical arrangements afford finely-grained manipulation of how tasks can be represented and have changed the way organizations ideate. In this paper, we investigate differences in behavioral decision-making resulting from IT-based support of open idea evaluation. We report results from a randomized experiment of 120 participants comparing IT-based decision-making support using a rating scale (representing a judgment task) and a preference market (representing a choice task). We find that the rating scale-based task invokes significantly higher perceived ease of use than the preference market-based task and that perceived ease of use mediates the effect of the task representation treatment on the users’ decision quality. Furthermore, we find that the understandability of ideas being evaluated, which we assess through the ideas’ readability, and the perception of the task’s variability moderate the strength of this mediation effect, which becomes stronger with increasing perceived task variability and decreasing understandability of the ideas. We contribute to the literature by explaining how perceptual differences of task representations for open idea evaluation affect the decision quality of users and translate into differences in mechanism accuracy. These results enhance our understanding of how crowdsourcing as a novel mode of value creation may effectively complement traditional work structures.

Machiavellianism or Morality: Which Behavior Pays Off In Online Innovation Contests?

Abstract Prior research on user behavior in online innovation contests has mainly focused on factors that positively impact prosocial, collaborative behavior, which should ultimately lead to innovative outcomes. However, little is known about the effects of more negative personal characteristics that might result in more competitive, antisocial, and even unethical behavior. This paper considers Machiavellianism as one of the traits that constitute the “dark triad of personality” and explores the relationship between Machiavellianism and participants’ contribution behavior in online innovation contests. Specifically we investigate how Machiavellian characteristics influence individuals’ contribution intensity, communication, and interaction behavior within the contest community as well as the quality and kind of their contributions. This study relies on multisource individual-level data from a large innovation contest in the field of public transportation. We find that the three dimensions of Machiavellianism—distrust of others, amorality, and desire for status—have very distinct behavioral consequences in the context of online innovation contests. Specifically, the oppositional consequences of amoral manipulation and striving for status on the one hand and showing distrust of others on the other hand concerning contribution quantity and contribution quality are found. This study contributes to a deeper understanding of negative personality traits such as Machiavellianism as powerful predictors of behavior and of success within competitive innovation environments and leads to important managerial implications regarding the design and management of innovation contests.